


Thought I smelled your ghost in my winter coat (monsters)

by Negen



Category: Hemlock Grove
Genre: Angst, F/M, French to English Translation, Letha is a kind of a ghost in here, M/M, Need closure, Olivia is a fucking monster, They were so tragic, This ship has murdered me, not over it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:22:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26535754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Negen/pseuds/Negen
Summary: We're in this together, Roman remembers, and he thinks it's one of the few things that are totally true in his life, besides his love for Peter.Do you want to come home ?he asks him shyly.We could be together, he thinks, just the two of us, and let the world burn and go crazy, who cares after all ?
Relationships: Roman Godfrey/Peter Rumancek
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	Thought I smelled your ghost in my winter coat (monsters)

**Author's Note:**

> I know this series has ended years ago and I'm quite late to the party, but this was the only way for me to deal with that season three terrible ending. I fell so hard for the Roman/Peter dynamic I just had to. This work was first written in french (my native langage) then translated in english. I hope the translation is alright ! Have a nice reading ! 
> 
> Title is from a song by an american band called The Midnight. Song's title is "Monsters". I thought it fitted.

**THROUGHT I SMELLED YOUR GHOST IN MY WINTER COAT (MONSTERS)**

* * *

Roman realizes that things changed after Nadia's disappearance. He thinks about Miranda, but barely. The kid takes up three-quarters of his worries. Not her fault : she is totally dependent and she can barely put one foot in front of the other, or say what she wants. She can write her name, and the big-letter cubes taunt him ( _NADIA_ ), but she's tiny and dependent and she's his daughter, even if he doesn't want her to, even if he hasn't asked for anything. He only reassures himself by thinking that Miranda has enough willpower to protect her, at least for a while, but that's bullshit adults say to children when they're as scared as them. Against Spivak, it's not worth much, but it's always good to take, and Roman desperately needs something good to take.

At first he thinks Peter is going to run away and call the whole town a bunch of nutcases, and frankly, it would have been hard to blame him, because Hemlock Grove did have a percentage of neurotics and psychos who nearly reached national records ( _dear Mummy_ ), but he can't help but be scared and on edge. It doesn't make sense. He feels like a violin or harp string stretched to the limit and ready to break any minute under pressure. Peter has already left once, so there's nothing new under the sun, and besides, he's a gypsy, and gypsies never settle down ( _they take the ring from your finger and the love from your heart_ ), but Roman remains on edge, remains a tight string, as he always has been, and as he probably always will be. The mechanism is too well anchored to let it go now. Besides, it runs in the family. He remembers his mother and her nervous breakdowns because Shelley came home two minutes too late, because he talked to that someone, because the tablecloth had a crooked fold. It's not a Godfrey thing, but it's probably an upir Godfrey thing. With the exception of Shelley, because she's the only one with a brain and a morality, the whole family seems to function in hysteria. For a while, Roman thought it was his mother's fault, but as the years go by, he's told that he is Olivia's son, and he thinks maybe he should stop kidding himself before he looks like a complete moron.

Spivak disappears with Nadia in one claw and Miranda in the other, blood dripping from her breasts and eyes ( _NADIA_ ), and Peter stays, even though no one ordered him to. When he gets up, when he goes to bed and when he does anything else, Roman calculates for how long, and what it would take for him to leave. He thinks about Letha. He doesn't want to, but she lives in the walls of his glass house and in Nadia's crib and in Peter's eyes when he looks straight ahead. He still has nightmares and has to take showers so long and so hot that his skin gets red and irritated, but Letha doesn't go away. Not her fault either. He sees the crib surrounded by her black veil and his mother whispering " _Remember_ ," and he feels alone and lost and he feels like he can never find any semblance of sanity again.

Yet he loves the kid. She scares him, and he knows that he scares her, and they terrorize each other because neither of them has asked to have the other in their lives, but he is incapable of being totally indifferent to her. She has tiny feet and tiny hands and tiny legs that she waves frantically every time someone comes into her padded room, and she has eyes that are too blue to be a normal child, and he thinks about Peter's hand against Letha's belly, and sometimes he dreams that he is in Letha's place, that his belly is swollen and Peter's hand is wrapped around it and caresses it. Nothing new under the sun, then. Especially not as far as Peter is concerned. Some things change, and some don't, whether you like it or not.

Peter crashes at Destiny's and it is to her that they first turn to find the kid. Destiny tries things that are all creepier than each other ( _try to feel the vibes, arrange the stones, draw the symbols, bring me back a rib steak, that's part of the thing_ ) and fails miserably, but she tries and it's nice of her to do so. _I owe you one_ , she tells Roman, and Roman feels his hand plunging into the wolf's entrails to fetch Peter, the smell of blood drowning his nostrils, like a ghostly feeling that his memory would have refused to erase. Peter hadn't changed back since then, and you had to be a complete retard not to see that he was afraid that the vargulf would eat him whole.

They decide to hire a private detective. _Not the police_ , Roman tells Peter, before returning home after yet another fruitless evening of smoke inhalation and talismans waving while waiting for Nadia to manifest herself, _we have to remain discreet_ . Peter nods his head to express his approval. He has massive dark circles under his eyes. Every time Roman sees him, Letha joins the party. It doesn't erase the anger and feelings of abandonment, but he can understand why Peter chose to leave town. He himself can barely stand it. He wonders what it would be like to leave for New York, to go to Europe. His mother spoke to him all the time about Europe in a superior tone, just the way she used to talk about everything that concerned her life before giving birth. _Shelley would love Europe_ . He wondered if a ghost could follow him to another continent. Letha had never been particularly stubborn, but her presence was unyielding. _Deal with it_ , she orders, and Roman deals with it, and takes endless showers and feels lonely and often cries and has nightmares.

Nadia has been missing for several weeks now and he and Peter see each other sporadically, mainly to look for the kid. But the territory becomes neutral. Before, with Nadia, with Miranda, with Letha, there was always a subject of complications, something to interfere between them and the unsaid. Now that all three are absent, everything starts again from scratch. Nadia becomes the new vargulf, Hemlock Grove regains the unhealthy and unknown stench of high school days. Roman is barely twenty years old, but he feels that centuries have passed since Peter first came to town and Olivia abruptly threw away her cutlery at dinner, calling him and his mother " _scum_ ". He has his own seat at the Godfrey Institute and that seat gives him thirty years more within the extraordinary space of a few seconds.

His mother makes attempts to contact him : he ignores them and hopes that she will die with her mouth open. Sometimes he wants to die. Shelley manages to soothe him, despite her shock, and he comes to see her often, and speaks very softly and sometimes puts his head on her lap. He worries when she goes to live with their praying mantis of a mother. She looks like Frankenstein, but she is sweeter and kinder than the world, and often when Roman thinks it would be appropriate to open his wrists and wait, he thinks of Shelley and how he would hurt her if it came to that, and he doesn't want to hurt her, so he puts away his old razor blade and goes to lie down and tries not to think about anything. Sometimes it works. More often than not, it's a failure, and he ends the night in a bar calculating how much alcohol could be fatal to him if he managed well enough, or if he was still capable of dying from an ethylic coma.

One evening, Peter tells him that Destiny is getting married. Roman answers " _Sheeee-it_ ", because that's the protocol for this kind of thing, and Peter says it back and asks if he can come live with him, under the pretext that the lovebirds need privacy, but mostly because he seems to be freaked out at the idea of hearing his cousin having a sex life. Roman grants him the argument. He thinks of Letha in a wedding dress ( _it was an angel_ ). She sits on the stool next to him and looks at them together the same way Roman saw her with Peter. _Mi casa and shit_ , he replies, and he knows his voice is too soft, he knows how he looks at Peter, and something inside him is throbbing and panicking and moaning and he does his best to ignore it, because that's his _modus operanti_ , and at this point it's best if he just ignores it.

 _Are you coming ?_ Miranda said, probably an eternity ago. They had never talked about it again, because it was the protocol. And so it stayed between them, in silence and embarrassment and desire, to the point of unfolding like a huge storm cloud that they would have carried over their heads. _Let's not trip, okay ?_ Miranda had said, and she meant well, but she didn't know what she had gotten herself into, or what she had set in motion, and why it had to be such a big deal. That was the Godfreys' specialty, to trip. She was completely wrong, but she had also said " _you're a broken child_ " to Roman, and she was right about that, so maybe she wasn't fundamentally wrong. Maybe it wasn't necessary to trip. _She's having our dreams_ , he had told Peter. _Our dreams_. Miranda had moved in with Roman almost by default. Peter asked. They had to trip.

They keep looking for Nadia and the detective gets bogged down and Roman takes his nutrient, loses weight and worries, and this is nothing new, but things change. The night he sees Annie for the first time, he tells Peter " _don't wait for me_ ", and he hopes Peter will say " _don't you want to go home instead ?_ "( _go home_ ), and he would have said yes and everything would have been settled, but Peter goes home alone and he loses his prey, before finding another one. Her tongue is hot and her mouth is moist but she has no face and makes no sense. Some things don't change. She loses her substance the second her mouth moves back and he sees Letha right in front of him and he feels like throwing up and crying and ( _Peter_ ) he leaves the girl on the sidewalk, as if she never existed. He thinks of Nadia ( _NADIA_ ). He drives away hungry and wanting to never have existed either. He wants his mother to die ( _darling tell me what you need Peter_ ). It's an old tune, now, the lyrics have not changed and the rhythm is still the same. Roman drives to his house of glass and emptiness, and there is a ghost on the seat next to him, looking at him with his big doe eyes and who knows.

Peter is in the spare room and he looks like an intruder, but in a good way, if anything at all. When Roman comes in, he has already taken hesitant marks and has wedged himself into the bed as smoothly as a dog in a cat basket. The full moon is in less than three days ( _can I watch ?_ ). Roman gets rid of his coat, drinks his glass of nutrient like the good little upir he will never be, and joins Peter in the bedroom. The house is full of silence and murmurs. Peter sees him hesitating in the doorway, tells him " _Come here_ " without an ounce of surprise ( _they take the love from your heart and a gypsy is a gypsy is a gypsy_ ), and Roman comes to him as if he is running straight into a wall, and Letha's ghost fades away the second Peter's arm wraps around his shoulders and Roman buries his face in the hollow of his neck, where he hears the beating of his heart and the blood that fuels it. He smells like home, and familiar, and everything Roman needs to keep fear and grief at bay. He presses his hand against Peter's chest and feels his cheek against his forehead. It's a new thing, and not so much at the same time. Peter says nothing, slides his hand along his spine, looks at the ceiling, puts a hand on his. They don't speak. That's not the protocol. When Roman wakes up, Peter is already far away. Roman goes to look for the girl he saw at the bar, because he is what he is, Peter is what he is, and they both know it.

x

The second time, Annie spent the night at his house. She is dark and beautiful and strange, and upir from head to toe, but she lacks the tortured side that Roman has forged since his transformation, and she looks comfortable with herself, enough to stay at his place and smile at him. He tried to seduce her at the bar, but she slipped away, and he thinks it's because she sensed that his seduction had a smell of forest and wolf fur. The full moon has passed, and he thinks back to Peter's first metamorphosis, to the wolf and the blood, and longs for it with all the drama that characterizes him. _For now, feed yourself the old-fashioned way_ , Pryce told him, and Roman is sick at the thought of sticking his teeth into someone's neck, while shivering with pleasure at the same time. Peter has left some stuff at his place, but he's moving out in fits and starts bringing in new stuff every time he shows up. Roman finds his T-shirts and sweaters in his laundry. He shamelessly steals a sweater from him, rubs his nose in it, and thinks he should probably get therapy.

Annie saves his life and she inexplicably stays and Peter arrives the next day without knowing who, why or how. He has slept elsewhere, probably at Destiny's, and Roman is a little angry with him ( _they take the love of your heart_ ), so he plays jerk and doesn't call a cab to his "conquest". _I'm like you_ , she told him the day before, with a complacent smile. She noticed Peter's t-shirts, probably smelled his scent all over the house and on Roman. She looks at them from afar like Letha and Miranda, but she understands what's going on better than they do, because she's not directly between them, elbowing her way through. She casts an audible glance at Peter, watches them isolate themselves, and Roman suspects what she sees, what she concludes, and the danger of secrets, especially when they are old and so deeply rooted like this one. _It's not a secret_ , he thinks in retrospect, _it's just something we don't talk about_. He would probably ruin a shrink. He likes the idea, despite its depressing side.

Peter smells of fear when he warns him about Annie, and a subtle, latent, leash-hold jealousy. Roman considers the hypothesis that Annie's upir status may be a threat : he has never met any of his fellow upir, and the first one that falls into his lap is a beautiful woman who obviously seeks his company. There have always been women, but not like that, and it's the connection more than the desire that worries Peter. _If you scare her off, I'll never know how she fits in to any of this, or how I fit in, to things in general_ , he tells him.

He feels alone all the time, and Peter is not going to stay in Hemlock Grove forever, embracing him at night and saying nothing to him and keeping the monsters under his bed. Roman knows that. It's just a matter of time. But Peter nods his head at his confession, stretches out his hands, puts them around Roman's waist, and says " _be careful, though_ ", and Roman nearly tells him he loves him in a fit of despair and fatigue. _I can't help it_ , he would probably explain to him, _it's stronger than me_ . But it's probably the only thing that's really good in his life, to a certain extent. It's always a question of context, in the end. He wraps his palms around Peter's face and leans his forehead against his own and lets Peter kiss his neck and think " _Forever, forever_ ".

When they come back, Annie has a gleam in her eye, and Roman knows she knows.

x

Then things take a vertical loop, get messy and make a U-turn that causes them to go off the rails. Pryce announces the existence of upir cancer with a morbid fascination that reflects the urgency of detox, and Anne has a strange look on her face when he offers her to stay at his place under Peter's eyes. There is something in the arrangement of her features and in her expressions that Roman feels he knows, without knowing why. When Peter returns to his business after Ochoa's visit, he kisses Roman on the mouth, and Roman is not even surprised, and responds to his kiss with such casualness that he wonders for a moment if the attack of the wild upir has not fried a few neurons in his brain.

It's not even a possessive kiss. It contains only relief, and habit, and tenderness. Roman thinks " _stay, hold me, don't leave me_ " and hates himself, even though the thought is nothing new. A few hours later, he swallows a spoonful of blood soup with other upirs who lived near him and whom he had never heard of, and who discuss food like in a cooking club. He thinks of Peter and what he would say " _Man, that's so disgusting and bourgeois_ ", and promises to test the potage one day at home, just to see how he reacts. What follows is a tangle of disasters. It rains zombie upirs on the pretty contemporary house where the tribe had gathered and they both get away with it, he and Annie, and Roman lazily adds one more trauma to the others as Letha contemplates in silence and patiently from afar. He misses Nadia. And Peter, too, when they are surrounded by the freaks. He wonders if it can be passed on to the werewolves.

He tells Annie everything because Letha becomes too tangible, and when he starts to cry, under the tension and exhaustion and the fact that Peter is not there, she's nice to him and he understands that he is completely broken and that nothing will probably ever be able to put the pieces back together ( _they take the ring from your finger_ ). She tells him " _don't torture yourself with this_ ", but it's too late, and anyway, if it wasn't for Letha, Roman would know how to torture himself with something else. He adds having sex with Annie to the list. It's almost instinctive.

He drinks blood and he's in a half delirious second state and he misses Peter, until Annie fills the void. He feels he's making a monumental mistake the very second she kisses him. But he doesn't stop her. He never really knew how to stop things, only how to break them. Peter's hands have left marks on his waist that no one can see. When he comes back, he hesitates to go to Shelley, to tell her that something is going on with Peter and that something has happened with Letha and Miranda and Nadia and Annie and Mom, and that he can't handle either of them, but then he changes his mind, thinking of the horrified expression that could appear on his sister's face, and concludes that she has enough problems of her own. He also revises himself believing that he and Annie have done something beautiful. Maybe it is. At least Annie was conscious, and so was he. He tries to call her, because he wants to talk to her and apologize for the guy in the morgue and see her and ( _because Peter isn't there_ ).

At night, on his way back from the White Tower, he finds Peter slumped like a starfish in the bed of the spare room, asleep above the blankets. Confused, Roman looks for the date of the full moon, finds it expected in several days, but Peter looks dead and when Roman touches his shoulder, he barely reacts. He lies down next to him, presses his head against his shoulder, breathes him in and feels exhausted. Peter's arm slides around his waist. _I've messed up_ , he whispers against his hair, and Roman raises his chin to kiss his lips and answers " _shut up, sleep, we'll think about it tomorrow_ ", and presses himself all the way up against him wishing he'll smell like him all week, especially when he sees Annie. They sleep a little over ten hours.

He wakes up before Peter, rolls on his side to dip his nose into the hollow of his neck and whispers " _I'll see you after my lunch meeting_ ", and Peter grunts a response by pressing his cheek against his forehead. Roman calls him a bastard, smiles into his neck. He's the one who leaves the house first. He wonders how Peter will react when he sees that he is alone in the big bed. Probably better than him, in any case. Peter has always been more independent. He tells himself that his mother must have fallen in love with a gypsy and been ditched hard to resent them so much. _Not me_ , he thinks ( _they take the ring and the love_ ). He tries to reassure himself with the idea that he is a little less of a bitch than his mother. Letha is still there. She laughs at every single one of his arguments.

They are in the same car and Roman is talking while Peter says nothing. He refuses Destiny's call. Roman can smell the anguish on him, and his eyes are haunted. _I messed up_. When he asks him if he's okay, Peter looks straight ahead and doesn't answer. Roman hesitates to put a hand in his. They're just beginning to get relatively well versed in bed, but outside, the territory is hostile and unknown. Moreover, they haven't talked about it. It doesn't really seem essential to Roman, because that would be like talking about something obvious, and they know each other well enough to know what's going on, but maybe a clarification could simplify things. For once, Roman wouldn't say no to simple things.

Peter's reaction to Ochoa's insults when they catch him in the warehouse looks astonishingly complex. He smells like a wolf and is in a wild rage that takes Roman by surprise and contrasts with the night they spent in the same bed. _I would like some calm and silence_ . Peter takes out his claws and cries in the car. Roman, accustomed to being in the same place as him, doesn't know how to react. After long minutes of being mute, Peter puts away the fangs, talks about the execution of Andreas, swears that he had no choice. _Oh, darling, if only you knew_ , thinks Roman, his hands clutched on the wheel. They find the body, dump it somewhere. Roman suggests the location. There's something almost hysterically hilarious about getting rid of a body with a pal, because it's like a cliché, except it's not, that time has passed since high school, and the moment becomes morbid, dilates between them into a black, slimy substance that they'll drag around for the rest of their lives, just one more. _We're in this together_ , Roman remembers, and he thinks it's one of the few things that are totally true in his life, besides his love for Peter. _Do you want to come home_ ? he asks him shyly. _We could be together_ , he thinks, _just the two of us, and let the world burn and go crazy, who cares after all ?_. But Peter needs to see Destiny, and the night is lost.

x

Pryce tells him that his mother is going to die slowly, agonizing a lot, and he is surprised to feel something old and childish when he thinks of the woman who used to play with him and smile when he brought home good grades from school. She is a monster of power and selfishness, but she was once his mother, and she is also Shelley's mother. Roman wonders how to tell his sister. At Andreas' funeral, he finds Annie, who hasn't called him back since they returned from the morgue. He throws himself on her like a dying beast. Peter is all about his pain and guilt, and Roman is all about his loneliness. Each to his own.

In the meantime, he assures Annie that killing the guard " _wasn't him_ ", but he thinks back to everything he's done before, and a part of him, who has Letha's voice, whispers to him that it is, it's him, but it's not completely her fault. And then his mother arrives and she does what she does best, and breaks everything. She talks and spits out her venom and Annie watches without intervening, mute with dazedness. In the corner of the room, Letha is watching, and she smiles, and her smile is twisted and scary. _Two of your sisters_ . Roman runs away. He ticks the trauma in his head, thinking, _what difference does it make_ ? He already feels like he's broken anyway. Even Peter won't be able to put those back together ( _darling tell me what you need Peter_ ). He would like to hold Nadia in his arms.

He finds Shelley in front of his door and she holds in her smile some pieces of his sanity. She is the only sister he has ever known, and he loves her, and he has never touched her. He clings to it desperately. He feels like he's being lied to all the time. _Secrets under secrets under secrets_ . He wants her around, to hold the helm of his mind in freefall for a bit, but she tells him that she has left Olivia's house, and he's too angry and too devastated to see that she just needs to be listened to. He doesn't pay attention to what he's saying. Roman comes to understand that they are now permanently separated by their respective traumas and the degree of harm Olivia has done to them. _It's her doing, it's Olivia, it's all her fault, it's always her fault, she devours me_ , he thinks frantically, wanting to tear his hair out, wishing the razor blade had killed him. His mother has decided to make him as insane as she is, maybe more. She was most likely going to succeed. Another sister in hiding and Roman was willing to bet that all his sanity would eventually be swallowed up. Shelley leaves, disappointed and angry. Roman cries for hours. He wants Peter. Peter doesn't come.

Instead, Annie shows up, dripping with repentance and useless explanations. _You knew_ , he thinks to himself as he looks at her, uncomfortable and pained, surrounded by the walls of his empty house. She tells him that she was waiting for the right moment to tell him of their family ties, and Roman refrains from letting her know that all the moments were good, from the time they crossed paths. She tells him " _my feelings for you are complex_ ", and Letha, in her corner, crumbles with laughter. Roman tries not to think about Peter. He concludes from Letha's hilarity that there is nothing complex about feelings : they are or they are not, period.

And there is nothing excusable about what Annie did, any more than there is anything excusable about what he did. There is no escape, nor is there understanding. He told her about Letha thinking he didn't need to relive such a horror. Annie threw him headfirst into it, knowing it very well, and not giving a damn. There are no excuses. She offers them, but they don't make sense. Roman already has too many monsters under his bed, and this one may well come apologizing, it wouldn't change anything, it's still a monster. She throws his mother back at his face. People are always throwing his mother back at his face for their own bullshit. They insult each other and fight and have sex and Roman gets lost gets lost gets lost.

Peter doesn't come back.

x

He meets him for a drink the next day and Roman grinds his teeth thinking that he can't stay because of this damn meeting. He washes himself obsessively now. His skin is irritated on his arms and shoulders. He has bought new razor blades. Peter looks like he hasn't slept for a century. His fingers are even more restless than Roman's. Roman wonders if Annie smelled him, if she has smelled the wolf, and if she was afraid of it. He wants to go home with him, let himself fall against him, feel his hands on his waist and his arms around his shoulders and stop thinking. Peter wants to tell Destiny the truth about Andreas, and something in Roman's belly ( _heart_ ) twists and collapses.

 _You can't do that_ , he tells him dryly ( _if you put yourself in danger if something happens to you I'll go insane I'll go insane I'll die why won't you understand_ ). He lacks patience. They leave each other bitter and annoyed. This is nothing new. Roman cries in the car and Letha admires his distress from the passenger seat ( _you deserve it_ ). _You look sad_ , Pryce remarks during the meeting. Roman is reluctant to tell him that he's always sad, but that it's just the first time it shows and he gets too tired to hide it. Then Pryce gets into a slippery subject ( _he's a very handsome boy_ ) and Roman puts up a Great Wall of China between him and the doctor's curiosity, convinced that his detox is getting to his brain. _It doesn't concern him_ , he decrees, _it has never concerned anyone but Peter and me_. Pryce is intruding. He knows ( _he knows because it shows_ ) but he'll never understand, and that's all the reassurance Roman can find. He misses Nadia.

Spivak attacks openly through one of his minions, but he drops a clue and Pryce grabs it with his usual efficiency. _I should probably buy him something someday_ , Roman thinks to himself as the doctor gently tucks his jacket around his shoulders. _To encourage productivity and employee well-being_ . He's thinking about telling him about Peter, telling him what's going on, asking him how you can tell someone you love them even if they're a bit of a moron, how you can live with someone knowing that you've done some awful things that you wouldn't even dare tell a shrink (and that those same things have made holes in your structure that you can't fill in). He goes home. Annie is waiting for him like she owns the whole place. He wants to strangle her, wants to see Peter in her place. She taunts him and throws salt on his razor cuts and opens the door to Destiny who rushes at him with her claws out, tells him that Peter is lying, " _since you two dusted off your little sister act_ ".

He's too on edge, too angry, too unhappy, and Destiny drives him into a corner without knowing what she's gotten herself into ( _there's always someone who ruins everything always_ ). He curses Peter and his cowardice and the fact that he is never there when he is needed, especially when Roman needs him. When she hits him, he reacts instinctively, without even being able to take the time to realize what he's doing. She breaks and Annie rushes in, seizing the good role. His thoughts are blocked, looping in circles. _Peter will blame me forever_. He breaks Destiny's neck, adds her to his consciousness, feels it dangerously faltering. _Peter would never have forgiven me_. He prefers secrecy to being abandoned. Annie doesn't understand, because she can't see. She puts herself in the place of a victim. He cries when he buries Destiny, covers with earth the risks that she implied for him, for Peter, for both of them altogether. He prays that Peter will never find out, but suspects that the gods have long since forgotten him. It's just a matter of time. Peter is naive, but that doesn't mean he's stupid, and he loves his cousin very much. He'll figure it out one way or another.

He buries her and locks Annie in Nadia's room, where she says nothing, only judges him between her lashes. _It doesn't matter_ , he thinks. He comes up with some ready-made justifications that even he doesn't believe in, but he tells the truth about Peter, and it seems to him that Annie grasps the nuance, even more than before, and she starts talking about God, divine forgiveness, and other crap that doesn't help when you have too much to carry along with you. He knows that what he did is going to cost him Peter's love. There's a countdown in his head : when it'll be over, Roman thinks he'll lose his mind. When Peter arrives and tells him about Destiny, he almost throws himself at his feet and confesses everything. His pride stands in the way, along with his selfishness and his intense and inordinate fear of seeing Peter disappear forever. Nothing new under the sun.

He hands him the clues left by Spivak about the location of Nadia and Miranda as a bait, while in the corner of the room, Destiny is standing next to Letha. From a distance they contemplate the horrors that are done for love. Peter is focused on Destiny ( _like a wolf_ ). Roman builds up a lie the size of the Tower of Babel and is still amazed at his prodigality when the situation involves Peter in any way. They attack Milan, who looks like the perfect scapegoat. Roman seizes the opportunity with the desperation of a drowning man. He knows that the water is rising and that he won't be able to stop it anyway. He takes the options he can, and chooses to keep Peter for himself as long as possible. He bites Milan and thinks he sees cruel jubilation in Peter's ( _wolf_ ) eyes. They blaze yellow. They are the same catastrophe, the same monstrosity. Roman has never loved anyone the way he loves Peter. He thinks he won't have time to love anyone else, and concludes that he doesn't want to anyway.

When Peter breaks down, Roman forces an imaginary confession, because Peter has a better heart than he does, and he won't go so far as to inflict a sadistic pain on Milan while believing that he can tell the truth. The latter ends up understanding what they ( _Roman_ ) expect from him and makes up the story from scratch, until Peter massacres him. He does it cleanly, with well-placed blows. At one point, Roman thinks he sees claws. The two of them kill Milan and Roman sees the disaster ahead, can feel it in his bones and muscles and heart. He hopes that his mother suffers, that she dies in fear and loneliness.

He tells Peter about the woods where he buried Destiny, gives him something to mourn over and come back. Peter doesn't return home all night, but Blinsky finds Spivak's hideout. Peter is there the next day, sweating guilt and pain, but he is there. _Nadia and Miranda need you_ , Roman tells him ( _I need you all the time_ ). They break into Spivak's cottage and discover dead bodies, and huge letters on coloured cubes ( _NADIA_ ). They find Miranda's corpse, immediately after Peter has extracted upir venom from his mouth to neutralize Spivak (his gestures are careful when he touches Roman, and very gentle, and Roman would like to kiss him on the lips and feel his beard sting his cheeks). Roman is afraid that Peter will collapse, but he just smokes his distress. _That's the problem with bodies : the more there are, the more they're just bodies_ , he thinks as he looks at Miranda's corpse under the tarpaulin.

The venom works on Spivak's creatures, and they find the warehouse. Peter approaches him before entering, informs him that he needs to tell him something ( _what, are we talking about it now ?_ ). _You've always been there for me_ , he remarks, and Roman, unsatisfied, replies " _we're family_ ". The statement doesn't work : Peter pinches his lips and nods his head pitifully, and the movement is enough to give Roman the delirious urge to press himself against him, to kiss him wholeheartedly, to bite his neck and to call him a dumbass for thinking they were just family. The mood is not there, but the reflex is still very much alive.

 _You must be the only idiot who doesn't see anything_ , he thinks, before he gives it a second thought. Maybe Peter could see very well. Maybe he was the one who couldn't see. They come upon Spivak, dressed in a ridiculous Christmas sweater, who threatens both their species, and who doesn't realize that he's talking to only one cataclysm, only one nightmare. Peter pours the venom into the vat and lets it spill out and shoots Spivak when he attacks Roman, and Roman bites the viscous skin on his neck. They both destroy him. Nadia reaches out to him when she sees him and looks at Peter with an air of pleasant surprise when they run to get her back. She has grown into his arms, but her hands are still small and her eyes are still blue. Peter strokes her hair, her hand meets Roman's. _Ours_ , the gesture says. Nadia babbles as if she had lived in a very sweet kindergarten while waiting for them.

They go home and Peter stays. They feed Nadia, change her, play with her a little, put her to bed. She falls asleep the second they place her in her crib, and her hand grabs Roman's finger. He kisses her tiny knuckles. Peter runs a hand behind his back, leaving it in the hollow of his loins. Roman would like to cut it off and nail it there forever. They go into Roman's room and lie on the bed together, embracing, Peter's arm around Roman's shoulders, Roman's face buried in his neck. The house is quiet, peaceful. They kiss each other and Roman whispers against Peter's lips " _there's no one else_ ", and he talks about the house, but about them too. Peter caresses the long leg that Roman has slipped between his own. _That's all I want_ , Roman thinks, listening to Peter's heart and blood, Nadia asleep in her crib in the next room. He stops himself from crying. He knows that Annie is waiting somewhere, like Letha, like Destiny.

Destruction is the only thing that can happen now.


End file.
